A member of the Bolsheviks from 1915, Zhdanov rose through the party ranks after the October Revolution of 1917 and eventually became political boss of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), leading the city’s defense during the 1941–44 siege by the Germans. He was a close associate of Joseph Stalin and reached the peak of his career after World War II, when as a full member of the Politburo (from 1939) he severely tightened the ideological guidelines for postwar cultural activities (seeZhdanovshchina). In 1947 he oversaw the founding of the international Soviet propaganda arm, the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau). Zhdanov’s death in 1948 is shrouded in mystery, but it seems to have been inopportune for his allies and followers, since it was followed by the notoriousLeningrad Affair, in which as many as 2,000 persons, many of them Zhdanov’s associates and subordinates, were purged, probably through the efforts of his enemies Georgy Malenkov and Lavrenty Beria.

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cultural policy of the Soviet Union during the Cold War period following World War II, calling for stricter government control of art and promoting an extreme anti-Western bias. Originally applied to literature, it soon spread to other arts and gradually affected all spheres of intellectual...

(1948–50), in the history of the Soviet Union, a sudden and sweeping purge of Communist Party and government officials in Leningrad and the surrounding region. The purge occurred several months after the sudden death of Andrey A. Zhdanov (Aug. 31, 1948), who had been the Leningrad party boss...